Commercial business owners of the world, I’m going to give you the best piece of advice you’re going to receive all day. This piece of advice could not only increase your sales but could also prevent your competitors from staking your claim. The advice? Claim your business listing in Google Maps.

It sounds easy but you’d be surprised how most businesses are skipping this step, yet it is as essential as ensuring you are listed correctly in the phone book. With consumers now turning to search engines as their source for local information over phone books, the time has never been more important to make sure your listings are correct online. Sure, these engines are crawling the net and collecting information to help create your listing, but unfortunately they’re not always getting it right. And what’s even more unfortunate is that some businesses hijack their competitor’s listings to steal their business. Claiming your listing is the best way to ensure your contact information is correct and to prevent hijacking. The question is, how do you claim your Google listing? I’m going to walk you through this process.

Step 1 – Create a Google account by completing this form.

Step 2 – Once your account is set up, type your address into Google Maps and look for your listing.

Step 3 – Once you find your address, click on the edit button in the window.

You will then be given the option to claim the listing.

Step 4 – Enter in all your business information correctly and thoroughly. Complete as many fields as applicable.

Step 5 – Verify your listing either by phone or postcard. If you select the phone call option Google will place a call to the phone number in your listing. If that option doesn’t work for you, then you can select the postcard option. For this option Google will send a postcard to the address in your business listing containing a confirmation pin to enter into your Google account.

And there you have it, you have now claimed your listing in Google Maps. Now the trick is to get this listing to rank well in Google for targeted keywords. We’ll discuss this in more detail at a later date.